NY judge denies Ghislaine Maxwell's habeas corpus bid

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Aug 25, 2026

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NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge on Tuesday denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s self-represented Hail Mary bid to get out of prison, finding the “rambling petition” brought by Jeffrey Epstein’s madame meritless.

The Manhattan Federal Court action filed by the British former socialite in December argued that new information arising in related lawsuits and the government’s trove of investigative files on Epstein proved her imprisonment was unlawful.

She renewed failed arguments that her rights were violated at her 2021 trial through juror misconduct, government collusion with victims’ lawyers, or other breaches, and challenged her 20-year sentence as excessive.

“In a lengthy and rambling petition which Maxwell twice supplemented with similarly discursive addenda, she claims that her constitutional rights at trial and sentencing were violated in multiple respects,” Manhattan Federal Court Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote.

“Maxwell’s claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous.”

The judge said the “new” evidence Maxwell pointed to, primarily released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, was largely irrelevant to the charges against her.

“On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges,” the judge wrote in the scathing opinion, later adding that any further appeals by Maxwell would not be taken in good faith.

The habeas corpus action represented a last-ditch legal effort by Maxwell to secure her release after her appeals fell flat. Her only avenue to freedom now would be a presidential pardon, for which she has lobbied.

Trump, who has sympathized with Maxwell and frequently socialized with her and Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s, hasn’t ruled it out.

“I’m allowed to do it, but I really haven’t thought about it,” the president said last summer.

Following a month-long trial in December 2021, a jury convicted Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate of recruiting girls and young women to be sex trafficked and abused for about a decade starting in 1994.

One of the victims who testified, Carolyn Andriano, said Maxwell and Epstein first preyed on her when she was 14, telling the court that during the grooming process, Maxwell took particular interest in her experience of being sexually abused by her grandfather as a very small child. Andriano fatally overdosed in 2023.

Maxwell is serving out her sentence at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, where she was transferred last summer from a much less comfortable maximum security prison in Florida.

The switch-up came after Maxwell sat for a highly unusual interview with then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, amid public uproar over Epstein’s undisclosed ties to some of the world’s most powerful people. Maxwell maintained she had never seen Trump participating in abuse.

The president has denied allegations he knew about or engaged in the perversion during their well-documented, years-long friendship.

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